Tuesday Poem: "Poem on My Father's Birthday"

On the train to Haifa

I think about my father

in wartime Palestine,

a different time, a different name

but the same place.

His memories of oranges and beaches

and warm, Mediterranean swimming

are the times he chose to rescue

from the six years when the world

was drowning in its own blood.

The weather is blue and grey

but the sun shines

like my father’s medals

on his blue-grey air force uniform

that entranced me as a child.

As the helicopter gunships prowl over Mount Carmel,

speeding north to Lebanon,

I wonder what times I will choose to rescue

from a land built out of longing,

but paid for in blood.

The poet wishes to acknowledge The Press in whose pages this poem first appeared.

U2's "Moment of Surrender" performed by Ryan Bell (7) and Thomas Bell (11)

Tuesday Poem: "Stealing the Dreaming"

I wake to sirens in the night

the voice of flight

black on white

a symphony of despair

rising and falling in the still night air

crossing the light

black on white

we stole their children

bred them bled them white

now we have bedlam in the night

read them their right

black on white

school work jail

set up to fail

feeling most alive when the sirens wail in the night

black on white

parents clan tribe totem language all recede

speed fills a need

hotwire ramraid let's give these Wetjalas a fright

wake them screaming from their dreaming

fair exchange              too right

I wake to sirens in the night

black on white

Wetjalas is the Nyoongar (South-West Western Australia tribe) word for "white man". When I lived in Perth, Western Australia, there was a lot of concern about young Aboriginals sniffing glue and then stealing powerful cars and taunting the police into high-speed car chases which often ended in serious injuries or fatalities.

The poet wishes to acknowledge Micropress New Zealand in whose pages this poem first appeared.

Tuesday Poem: "Ruby, the dark-haired girl (1887-1987)"

O grandmother,
though we are Pakeha you had great mana.

You lived close to that taciturn volcano, One Tree Hill,

and its scoria scars were like the lines on your face,

etched out by the evolution of that city.

And, grandmother, you remembered the beginning of the cycle

with the lucid vision you could not afford on the recent past.

I always wanted to tell you that I loved you, grandmother,

with a sincerity you would feel long after you passed

through the gates of heaven.

To tell you that when I was a child,

I believed you would be here always,

but then I listened closely to the silence between your words

and I knew you were weary of this world.

You were the last bridge

connecting us with a pioneer century

and I feared we would lose ourselves if ever we lost you,

but we never did

for in our children and in our children’s children

we will see the face of Ruby, the dark-haired girl.

Tuesday Poem: "Venus' Slip"

Like a sailor returning from a long sea voyage
to find his village wiped out,

like a soldier returning from an unpopular war

to find the gates barred,

his eyes traversed the terrain of his longing,

but the landscape offered him no point of entry.

She no longer keeps the home-fires burning,

she stamps them out

lest they betray the flicker of her ardour.

Across a vast plain of darkness

he sees her there, working in silhouette,

methodically cooling, dousing down their history

from the bottomless bucket of her frozen tears.

Here a memory, there a moment of affection

and over here

every moment she ever arched in ecstasy

or ached with longing at his touch.

“No more, no more,” she whispers, her head bowed

over her breasts, “all fire is consumed by ice.”

His loins and heart debate constantly,

but they are separate animals now and he rises

above them with the lightness of suffering.

Up here, he captures the clarity he was always denied

and he sees her like Venus in a half-shell

attempting vainly to cover her nakedness.

As she recedes from view, she lifts one arm to wave

and her flimsy cloak falls down.

The poet wishes to acknowledge Valley Micropress in whose pages this poem first appeared.